Talk:Why Light Should Have Legitimately Won/@comment-5308094-20171119070441
I only finished this show very recently as well. :) Hm. I find myself agreeing more with the added argument from "A" about how Light's world would not truly be a utopia. But beyond that, I was thinking that from a narrative standpoint, Light as a character is not someone who is supposed to be seen as a good person. Perhaps initially he was, but I feel that by the time he has killed Lind L. Tailor, the FBI agents, and Naomi Misora, it's pretty much been established that he's begun to devolve morally into a killer who justifies his acts to both himself and others as the work of justice. We see this in his overtly sinister laughter, the imagery surrounding his character (i.e. his hair and eyes turn in blood-red in the more artistic segments, and his character is frequently symbolically tied to the "forbidden fruit" of the apple), and his willingness to kill innocents to protect himself. There's even a brief scene in which he contemplates killing his younger sister Sayu after she's kidnapped by Mello, but he chooses not to purely because it would incriminate him as Kira. Even at his father's death bed, his mind is working to calculate his superficial emotional response and how he can shape it to get his dad to commit murder and clear Mello from his path. All this runs so contrary to conventional morality and is cast in such explicitly malevolent light (pun not intended) that it is very difficult to perceive the character as an ultimately good person. However, by your rather brusque disregard of such objections regarding character, I can tell that your point instead is on matters of practicality, to which I would respond by recalling the point of argument made by "A". Light's world is likely to have less crime, but at what cost? This is the same dilemma that differentiates thinkers like John Locke from Thomas Hobbes: whereas Locke asserts that freedom of expression takes precedence over security (demonstrated by his outspoken support of upsetting establishments to secure better social contracts that enable such "liberty"), Hobbes declares that security is of greatest importance, hence the justifying of having a Leviathan-esque government. Even in the situation of a Leviathan government, however, Light's world doesn't compeltely hold up. A Leviathan is not only omnipotent, but also stable. Light does not seem to be concerned with finding a successor; if anything he seems repulsed by having anyone other than himself have complete control of the Note (even Mikami technically only had partial control, since he was at the beck-and-call of Light). For some peculiar reason, Light does not appear overly conerned with the sustaining of his world after his inevitable passing: he instead seems preoccupied with the glory of it being ''his ''world, even if only for a while. This here is where we see the gravest problem of Light's World: it is ultimately rooted within one man's internal desire for power, his desire to feel like God. You disregarded Light's character as a reasonable ground for debate earlier, but I feel that since Light's world is wholly dependent on one man's character, that of his own, it is absolutely something worth discussing. The "New World" is not rooted in the desire for a better world, but in one man's imperfections and character flaws, and this all shows through in his brutal actions as Kira. If given a choice between the betterment of innocents and himself, Light would always choose himself, all the while ironically justifying in his mind that it is for the innocent that he prioritizes himself over others. There is a musical theme in the OST of Death Note titled as "Low of Solipsism". Solipsism is the idea that only the self is known to exist. Akin to "I think therefore I am", it effectively denies the certainty of the existence of others, thereby also denying th importance of any entities beyond the self. This musical theme plays for Light Yagami's potato chip-eating and criminal-killing sessions. It is thus suggested that he doesn't kill for the betterment of others, but rather for the gratification of the self. And a society built upon one individual's desire for self-gratification is not a stable one. P.S. Try not to disregard other people's potential argument points as being the product of intoxication or mental dysfunction. It isn't very conducive of the sharing of ideas, which I believe is the fundamental purpose of a wikia.